
Qass. 
Book. 



< u J 



THE LIMITS 



EESPONSIBILITY IN REFORMS. 



BY T. RUSSELL SULLIVAN. 



CONTENTS. 

jJlGE. page. 

1. Healthy Sentiment of Freedom 5 Tendencies of Party Spirit : 

approved ; excessive Den uncia- False Issues; the Foreign 

tion of Slavery condemned . . 5 Press ... - 16 

2. Wart of Right to interfere with 6. American and Patriotic Consi- 

Slavery in the Slave States . . 7 derations 23 

8. Th« Christian Spirit 12 7. Divine Providence 25 

4. Clerical Inferiority in Political , 8. Paramount Duty of Pacifica- 

Conflicts 15 '■ tion 27 



BOSTON: 
A. WILLIAMS AND COMPANY, 

100, WASHiKGTOir Street. 

1861. 



THE LIMITS 



OP 



EESPONSIBILITY IN EEFOMS. 



BY T. R.. SULLIVAN. 



BOSTON: 
A. WILLIAMS AND COMPANY, 

100, Washington Street. 

1861. 



,S?f 



BOSTON : 

printed by john wilson and son, 

22, School Street. 



IN EXC«IN6e 



THE 



LIMITS OF RESPONSIBILITY IN REEORxMS. 



The 22d of February, 1881, has passed. The star- 
spangled banner again gave sign that the Power 
that made us a nation has graciously kept us so. 
Will it be thus on the next anniversary of the day ? 
Are our eyes and our cliildren's destined to see 
that standard-sheet rent in twain, or star after star 
blotted from its azure field ? Will the seceding 
States at the extreme South return ? or will one 
after another be drawi\ after them ? The future is 
known only to God. We know not what a day may 
bring forth ; but we will not despair as long as a 
national welcome shallbe given to the birtliday of 
Washington, and the national flag still floats over 
the capital called by his name. Even now, the gloom 
is somewhat relieved, and the signs brighten. The 
last reports from the Peace Conference are favora- 
ble. 

It is said that the greatest service that the coun- 
try could receive would be a tliorough treatise on 



the ethics of slavery. Riifus Choate said, " As a 
mere question of rival philanthropies to the slave 
and to the nation, a treatise might be written which 
should be built upon all the great ethical writers of 
ancient and modern times, and which sliould be at 
once comprehensive and rigidly logical, and which 
sliould settle the question. I now know but one 
man who could write it ; and that is Dr. Walker, 
of Cambridge." This admitted, what follows may 
serve as an essay towards that object. If it should 
excite tliought in that direction, a useful aim will 
have been accomplished. 

Violence, in connection with reform, is the root 
of our present sectional enmity. The voice of 
patriotic warning is directed against violence in 
speech and acts, not in the halls of legislation only, 
but everywhere. '' The land is destroyed," said the 
prophet, " for the violence of them that dwell there- 
in." Is violence confined to one section of the 
country ? It has been, and is, in all the land. The 
press teemed with it; the lecture-room resounded 
with it ; the pulpit echoed the tone of the newspaper 
and the harangue. The people have unconsciously 
breathed an atmosphere of violence. So for twenty 
years it has been, and so it still is. The influential 
unconsciously aggravate the evil by transmitting it 
from high to humble, and from old to young. The 



wind, thus sweeping into the whirlwind, has gathered 
force to send over hill and valley a storm of " railing 
accusation," that, like the Persian arrows at Ther- 
mopylae, darkens the sun. There has been violence 
for freedom, as well as violence against slavery. 

This is not to be construed as defensive of slavery. 
No candid mind would confound disapproval of the 
mode of opposing that system with approval of 
the system itself. Wherever slavery does not 
exist, human sentiment must be against it. Apart 
from the national complicity, this would be true 
here without any qualification. Every lover of 
freedom, speaking or writing on slavery, must, if 
true to himself, as the poet with his ideal, always 
fail to bring his language up to his convictions ; 
for these, if truly represented, would breathe forth 
" words that burn." No Christian or patriot, unless 
born and educated in a slave country, would be 
consistent, if he could argue calmly on the subject 
-without having first avowed his sympathy with such 
sentiments as the following from the poet of Hope, 
as applicable wherever oppression bears rule : — 

" A little while, along thy saddening plains 
The starless night of Desolation reigns ; 
Truth shall restore the light by Nature given, 
And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of heaven ; 
Prone to the dust, Oppression shall be hurled, — 
Her name, her nature, withered from the world." 
1* 



But the question is, Is violence the remedy ? 
What, tlien, is better? Poetic inspiration replies, 
" Truth ; " divine inspiration adds, " Spoken in 
love." Not only is human sentiment against sla- 
very : sound principle is against it. Take, on the 
one side, Channing's exposition of slavery as a 
wrong : take, on the other, the code of some Slave 
State ordaining it as right. No unbiased mind can 
hesitate on which side is the advantage of sound 
principle. But will violent means bring about a 
substitution of the sound for the unsound ? 

Again : historical facts are against slavery. It 
exists in this country, not in a mitigated, but a 
severe form : for the scriptural or patriarchal ser- 
vitude is mildness itself, compared with the Ame- 
rican ; and this notwithstanding the progress of 
Christian civilization lias been compelling nation 
after nation to abandon it. This is the case, stated 
with all its aggravations. But will a violent policy 
tend either to remove slavery, to contract its limits, 
or to soften its barbarity ? Now, this excess of moi^al 
condemnation, of which we have been speaking 
above, is not only exasperating, but unjust. There 
is an element of injustice in all exaggeration ; and, 
to apply this here, what is slavery ? Slavery, tliough 
a great moral and political evil, is not a crime in 
itself, like those specified in the Decalogue, — " mur- 



dcr,'' " adultery," &c., so that every one that owns 
a slave must be guilty of a conscious sin against 
God. 

Such exaggeration is only a name and a cloak for 
" all uncharitableness," which is itself a moral evil, 
demoralizing to the community indulging in it, as 
well as injurious to the cause of human rights every- 
where ; for, great moral wrong and political evil as 
slavery is, a more enlightened and Christian esti- 
mate of it where it exists can only follow a more 
persuasive influence where it exists not. Violent 
denunciation there, as in all other cases, only shuts 
the ear and steels the mind to words of conviction, 
which, in controversy, must always be words of 
"soberness as well as truth." There have been 
times and places when slavery was unavoidable. 

In the duty of correcting this excess in the moral 
condemnation of slavery, we have presented the first 
of the limitations of responsibility that we proposed 
to consider. No ethical treatise on slavery would 
be sound which did not at once give scope to the 
sentiment of freedom, and restriction to the censure 
of its opposite. 

2. Not being classed with the sins of the Deca- 
logue, not only is slavery proved not in all cases, 
like robbing and murder, a conscious sin : it fol- 
lows, also, that there is no such hasty call to extin- 



8 



guisli it as if it were. To whatever height your 
abhorrent feeling has reached, it finds a practical 
limit in the absence of any right to interfere with 
slavery in the Slave States. Still there is a class 
whose consciences are unsettled on this point, as 
appears from the setting-up of antislavery presses 
in tlie West with the hope of reforming Southern 
opinions, in the tenor of popular books and lec- 
tures, as well as in the self-justification so many 
make of their personal encouragement of the slave 
to quit the master. It is against this unsound im- 
pression that Mr. Dana's able exposition seems 
valuable. 

After observing that there are certain relations 
in which we stand to slavery that were not matters 
of concession and compromise, and others that were, 
lie goes on to inquire, " What are those relations 
that are not matter of compromise ? One is this : The 
domestic institvitions and relations are purely matter 
of State control. All the domestic institutions each 
State regulates absolutely for itself. Over these the 
National Government has no control. We were all 
equally interested in that ; and that is the keynote 
of our difference between the National and State 
governments. Those persons who tell you Congress 
has no control over slavery in the States — that 
the right to regulate slavery is guaranteed to each 



State — misapprehend the position. The fortifica- 
tion of slavery in the States rests upon a deeper 
foundation than that. It is because slavery is one 
of the domestic relations that Congress cannot touch 
it ; and the same power in Congress wliich could 
abolish slavery in Carolina could establish slavery 
in Massachusetts. 

"Now, from the beginning, all men, of all sec- 
tions of the country, of all opinions and all inte- 
rests, have agreed that all the domestic relations, 
slavery included, are matters solely of State control. 
No men desire that more than we do. It frees us 
from all responsibility for slavery, and guarantees 
us in our States the control of all our domestic 
institutions." — Richard H. Dana, jun.y Feb. 11, 
1861, at Cambridge, as fully reported in the "Atlas 
and Bee." 

Why, I ask, are these absolutely matters of State 
control ? Because, I answer, in any State or any 
country it is fundamentally right it should be so. 
The same pre-eminent or domineering or interfering 
power that could abolish slavery in Carolina could 
establish it in Massachusetts. But it w^ould be ab- 
solutely wrong to do either. Now, what is the cor- 
responding healthy moral feeling ? Plainly this, 
that you cannot, as an individual, interfere with 
slavery as it exists in the families of a Slave State ; 



10 



because, being a domestic relation, it is positively 
wrong for you or for any one to meddle with it. 
One would tliink Mr. Dana's clear statements might 
set at rest here many a perplexed mind and uneasy 
conscience. Slavery, being a domestic institution 
where it exists among the inhabitants of the South, 
is morally sacred from your touch, just as your own 
Northern relations and household arrangements are 
from theirs. 

" Yet," says Rev. Dr. Fuller of Baltimore, in his 
letter of Dec. 19, 1860 (published in the " Christian 
Register" of Jan. 4, 1861), '' the North has wasted 
large sums for abolition books and lectures, for ad- 
dresses calculated to inflame the imaginations of 
women and children, and to mislead multitudes of 
men, most excellent and pious, but utterly ignorant 
as to the condition of things at the South. We now 
find, indeed, that money has been contributed even 
for the purchase of deadly weapons to be employed 
against the South, and to enlist the most ferocious 
passions in secret crusades ; compared with which, 
an open invasion by foreign enemies would be a 
blessing. . . . But there must he some limits to hu- 
man responsibility ; and a man in New England has 
uo more right to interfere with the institutions of 
Virginia than he has to interfere with those of Eng- 
land or France. All such interference will be 



11 



repelled by the master ; but it will prove injurious 
to the slave. Dr. Channing was regarded as a lead- 
ing abolitionist in his day ; but, could that noble 
man rise up, he would stand aghast at the madness 
which is rife everywhere on this subject. * One 
great principle, which we should lay down as im- 
movably true, is, that if a good work cannot be 
carried on by the calm, self-controlled, benevolent 
spirit of Christianity, then the time for it is not 
come.' Such was his language when opposing 
slavery." 

But this is not all. There is a further limitation 
of responsibility in the complex nature of the slave 
as " person and property." This was one of the diffi- 
culties treated by Mr. Madison in the '' Federalist." 
If unnoticed in the Constitution, it is not so in the 
slave codes. There the slave is person and property 
both ; '' and the property amounts," says Mr. Nathan 
Appleton, "to thousands of millions of dollars. This, 
to be sure," he proceeds, " is nothing to a thorough- 
going abolitionist, who scouts the idea of making 
man a chattel. The political economist, however, 
knows that all property is the creature of legisla- 
tion. Any thing is property which the law makes 
so. Slaves are, therefore, property in the Slave 
States ; and we of the North have nothing to do 
with the question." Whatever the slave may be to 



12 



you theoretically, there he is both person and pro- 
perty ; property in the sense that no one can, with- 
out mischief, undermine its security ; property iu 
the sense that no one in the Union can, without 
unfaithfulness, endanger its loss ; much more when 
involving, as it does, a still more fearful dan- 
ger, — the risk of insurrection, the hazarding in 
every family and in every field of the right, not to 
property only, but life ! Can that be a trustworthy 
conscience which dictates doing evil that good may 
come ? Tlie truth is, there is not a shadow of obli- 
gation to do any thing in the case. The limit of 
responsibility is absolute. The wrong you cannot 
do directly, you should not try to do indirectly. A 
truly enlightened conscience would not determine 
otherwise ; for that indirectness here is only another 
name for injustice mingled with treachery. 

3. Responsibility here is limited, again, by the 
Christian spirit. There is no doubt that the work 
of Christian civilization or reform should proceed 
only so fast and so far as is consistent with Christian 
principle. Place the standard of reform ever so 
high, — let Clu'ist be the guide, and universal bene- 
volence the scope, — still we can safely follow only 
as we pursue it in the spirit of Christ. In critical 
political times, the clergy should encourage men to 
maintain their rights to the utmost, but at the same 



13 



time influence them to restrain their bad passions. 
There was nothing, as Dr. Fuller shows, contrary to 
this in Channing : there is nothing contrary to it in 
his works, nor in the spirit and labors of tiie great 
majority of his successors in the ministry. But 
there is a different temper abroad ; and tliere is 
danger that it will enter in and possess all tlioso 
who oppose national wrongs in the spirit of denun- 
ciation instead of love. No service of Christ, even 
if done in his name, can be hopeful, unless done in 
his spirit. Dr. Fuller's is not the only respected 
name opposed to violence as the means of reform. 
A few anniversaries since, in the Winter -street 
Church, Dr. Bethune of New York, and Dr. Todd of 
Pittsfield, Mass., leading ministers in different leading 
denominations, united in support of the proposition, 
that Christian reform should proceed in the spirit, 
" not of denunciation, but of love." With theirs 
the mind of Channing has been already shown to 
agree ; but a remarkable confirmation of this ap- 
pears in a letter of his, written before 1851, but not 
till now put into general circulation. We cannot 
do better for his memory or for the public service 
than to insert it in full. It will be seen to be fa- 
vorable both to pacification and to union. 



14 



rrom the Boston Courier, Feb. 1, 1861. 

Washington, Feb. 15, 1851. 
Messrs. Gales & Seaton, — Having occasion, recent- 
ly, to look over some files of letters written several years 
ago, I happened to fall on one from the late Rev. Dr. 
William E. Channing. It contains passages which I think, 
coming from such a source, and written at such a time, 
would be interesting to the country. I have therefore 
extracted them, and send them to you for publication in 
your columns. Yours respectfully, 

Daniel Webster. 

William E. Channing to Daniel Webster. 

My dear Sir, — I wish to call your attention to a 
subject of general interest. 

A little while ago, Mr. Lundy . . . visited this part 
of the country to stir us up to the work of abolishing 
slavery at the South ; and the intention is to organize 
societies for this purpose. ... It seems to me, that, 
before moving in this matter, we ought to say to them 
["our Southern brethren"] distinctly, We consider slavery 
as your calamity, not your crime ; and we will share with 
you the burden of putting an end to it. We will consent 
that the public lands shall be appropriated to this 
OBJECT, or that the General Government shall be clothed 
with power to apply a portion of the revenue to it. . . . 
We must first let the Southern States see that we are 
their friends in this affiiir, — that w^e sympathize with 
them, and, from principles of patriotism and philanthropy, 
are willing to share the toil and expense of abolishing 
slavery, — or I fear our interference will avail nothing. 
I am the more sensitive on this subject from my increased 



15 



solicitude for the preservation of the Union. I know 
no public interest so important as this. I ask from the 
General Government hardly any other boon than that it 
will hold us together, and preserve pacific relations 
and intercourse among the States. / deprecate every 
thing which sows discord and exasperates sectional ani- 
mosities. . . . 

My fear, in regard to our efforts against slavery, is 
that we shall make the case worse by rousing sectional 
pride and passion for its support ; and that we shall 
only break the country into two great parties, which 
may shake the foundations of government. . . . 

With great respect, your friend, Wji. E. Channing. 

Hon. Daniel Webster. 

4. Again : as regards the ministry, this responsi- 
bility is limited by clerical inferiority in ambitious 
or untimely political conflicts. The objections here 
are confined to the exciting seasons just before elec- 
tions, and apply to the use of the pulpit then to 
influence the votes of a congregation : on all other 
times and occasions, the writer would be a warm 
advocate of unabused freedom both of the pulpit 
and the religious press. This weakness is almost 
proverbial ; and yet ministers are urged " to take 
the lead " in political influence. A better friend to 
them would advise, " Avoid this taking the lead ; 
for clerical comparative inexperience in these secu- 
lar matters limits your responsibility, and should 



16 



content you to be a conscientious supporter ratlier 
tlian a rashly zealous guide." When a clergyman 
comes down into the political arena (still continuing 
his peculiar station or office), he leaves his appropri- 
ate sphere, and one of two things follows : either he 
meets more than his match, and loses professional 
dignity in that way ; or else, finding only equals or 
inferiors, while the devotion of a few becomes more 
ardent, with the many he loses as much of legitimate 
influence in his own sphere as he gains of illegiti- 
mate superiority in another. 

5. This responsibility is limited, again, by the 
tendencies of party spirit, which operate to blind 
the mind by prejudice as to ideas, and by passions 
as to persons. Associated with a party, there is a 
recklessness of responsibility, in the more restless 
and unsteady, as to the tendencies of opinion and 
the consequences of speech. There are many 
fixed prejudices and floating fallacies, many moi^bid 
fancies and morbid feelings, any one of which 
may be encouraged by public teachers, without the 
jiabit of careful discrimination. By recklessness 
of speech, or — what amounts to the same — 
countenancing those whose pride or pleasure it is 
to use it, you may do a great deal of unintended 
mischief. Even when aiming at caution, a man 
may be understood to say the very opposite of what 



17 



his language was intended to convey : how much 
more when caution has ceased to be studied at all I 
A careless sceptical expression may make a con 
firmed sceptic : an honest religious sarcasm may 
sap the faith of an unguarded soul. 

" Well, then, may Doubt, the mother of Dismay, 
Pause at her victim's tomb, and read the lay." 

The fear of its tendency to your own mental dete- 
rioration should save you from the thraldom of 
party. Party spirit is a snare to ardent minds, 
whether young or old ; interfering with their right 
developing or maturing, as the case may be. Ideas 
are seen through a distorting medium, — as a stick 
put down into the water shows to the eye bent from 
its straightness. Party policy is the foe of mental 
largeness and independence ; and party passion 
becomes the alloy to a pure moral enthusiasm. 
Then comes, from the mysterious multitudinous 
force of sympathy, the irresistible flow of fanaticism, 
vitiating the stream at the fountain ; colored more 
and more, as it swells, with the sulphurous stain 
that is " from beneath ; " mingling less and less of 
reason and conscience, and more and more of hate, 
to that hour in its crisis when both madness and 
darkness rule. 

How false issues substituted for the h'ue^ though 
with unquestioned honesty of purpose, may contri- 

2* 



18 



bute injuriously to party excitement, may be seen 
in the following criticism by the present writer, 
printed three years ago, but applicable now as mat- 
ter of political experience past and present ; injuri- 
ously, because popular passions, illogically founded, 
cannot, from the re-actions sooner or later to result, 
be of patriotic service, on the whole. 

The orator of the 4th inst., 1857 (Rev. W. R. Al- 
ger), says, '^ There are four conceivable modes of ac- 
tion, one of which must be followed." Three of these 
lie has himself set aside ; and the other must share 
the same destiny, unless really based on a sound 
position. What is that fundamental position ? and 
how does it agree with the fundamental principle of 
our national existence ? " Slavery," he says, " is 
not properly any part of our National Government, 
not an element of our organic life, but a sectional dis- 
ease, a temporary excrescence. . . . The Free States 
alone fairly represent the true genius and historic 
posture of the country." This theoretically, as im- 
plied in the Declaration of Independence, or philo- 
sophically prophetic, as holding up a standard of 
progress, is pointless and harmless ; and would make 
no more stir than has many a sounding generality 
incident to the occasion. But when, at the close, 
this is connected with proposed action, and we of 
" the Free States " are called " to rally at the ballot- 



19 



box, and assume that controlling power in tlie Na- 
tional Government which properly belongs to us ; " 
and, further, are exhorted that it is " our duty in 
relation to slavery, by consolidated voting, to shut 
it within its jail limits, and cut off its nutriment," 
— then the practical bearing of the whole is such as 
" must give us pause." We perceive that the poli- 
tical action based on the position assumed is such 
as to exact a critical examination, since it amounts 
to an order (speaking in. military phrase) to the 
Free States to " change front," — in a manner, too, 
to bring their next advance in the direction of dis- 
union ! Hence the hoarse murmurs that mingled 
with the festive plaudits. 

Now, will the position, that " slavery is not proper- 
ly an organic part of our National Government," bear 
examination ? The National Union was ratified by 
the States of every section ; and nothing has occurred 
since to give the Government founded upon it a 
radical change. Then it has not radically changed. 
And how was it then? Why, precisely the contra- 
ry to the " posture " set up here ; for, the States of 
every section uniting and organizing under tlie 
Constitution, it is proved, as clear as daylight, that 
the American Constitutional Government normally 
consists of a union of the free and slave sections, 
and not of either one of them alone. We have such 



20 



a srovernmcnt, or none. And this fact cannot be set 
aside by any theorist, or combination of theorists ; 
not even if they were a majority. As it was co- 
originate with the Constitution, it must be co-existent 
with it ; and can only be reversed when that Con- 
stitution shall be annulled, and that Government 
dissolved, by acts as formal and deliberate as those 
which first gave them their present lawful suprema- 
cy. Accordingly, a party rallied on that basis must 
be, not a national, but a sectional party, — the same 
in principle, if not in extreme, with those other dis- 
union parties already too much organized and too 
active for " the general welfare." 

A like example may be found, of late, in the intro- 
duction into the Chicago platform of some part of the 
Declaration of Independence as the basis of political 
excitement and national policy. Those sentences 
containing such phrases as that " all men are 
created equal" do not belong to the Constitution 
of the United States, as is evident by comparing the 
two ; and were undoubtedly omitted for the very 
purpose of forming " a more perfect union." This 
constituted a false issue, hastily adopted, doubtless, 
in the excitement of the time, but, as inconsistent 
with the popular cry of the same party, " The Con- 
stitution unchanged ! " affording another instructive 
instance of the power of prejudice to blind the mind 
to right distinctions. 



21 



We sliould not be uiiwatcliful of foreAgn in- 
fluence against slaveiy in America, as tending to 
intensify American party spirit. We have no 
national antipathies ; we welcome strangers ; we 
like their sympathy : but we distrust foreign influ- 
ences on exciting questions and in critical times. 
We doubt not that every sympathetic expression 
of tlie English Queen towards us comes warm from 
the heart : we suspect no insincerity in that en- 
lightened portion of the English public represented 
in the sentiments of the " London Inquirer." Siill 
tliere is, in the European press generally, much that 
seems dictated by a different spirit, and very easy 
to turn to a mischievous use. The foreign press, 
in its prejudiced tone towards slavery as it exists 
here, is an agent of ultra excitement, of which the 
operation is as subtle as the benefit is deceptive ; 
giving just occasion to discern in it one of the limita- 
tions, rather tlian incitements, of our responsibility. 
Whether its source be the fastidious literary circle 
or the public denunciatory platform, the secret com- 
mercial agency or the arrogant editorial column, 
the admonitory word, spoken '' out of season," is 
always an element of discord. Witliout offence, we 
may smile at or repel, as may suit the case, that 
narrow and visionary philanthropy which is always 
tugging at the political structure, reckless whether 



22 



the teariiig-away of a part iniglit not suddenly bring 
down the whole ; tliat supercilious social preten- 
sion springing from the accident of birth ; that 
affected moral superiority which assumes the right 
of dictation, where even the intrusion of counsel, 
unsought, would be rashness : against all this, and 
much tliat is like it, we may take reasonable caution. 
That the leaders of European public opinion should 
mould and sway American public opinion, or that 
they are in a position to guide or to test it under 
the peculiar experiment of self-government going 
on here, is, to say the least, questionable. 

In that foreign field, however, there is scope for 
the patriotic statesman's discernment and vigilance. 
In the statement of Mr. Horatio J. Perry, United- 
States Secretary of Legation at Madrid (see his letter 
referred to in '^ Boston Journal " of March 4, 1861), 
that " slavery, and slavery propagandism, have seri- 
ously impaired our influence with foreign govern- 
ments by depriving us of their sympathies," we 
recognize a higher order of signs and influences than 
are found in that mingled strain of cant, sarcasm, 
and insult, to which we have just referred. Those 
lessened sympathies, like the abolition of serfdom in 
Russia and the inaptitude of New Mexico for slavery, 
may be reckoned among the voices of Nature and the 
barriers of Time against the wide, final extension 



23 



of negro servitude. It may be, as the same writer 
tliiiiks, that " a general foreign policy favoring the 
North would follow the permanent separation of 
the Gulf States ; " while, in concurrence, the vast 
increase of cotton in India and Africa, now proved 
practicable, might work the decline of that staple in 
the South. That may constitute an arc of a great 
providential circle, by which slavery is to be morally 
circumscribed in the end, as distinct, though in- 
visible, as the parallel line of 36^ 30' on the map 
of North America. But then this is the majestic 
march of divine progress ; always, unlike man's 
providence for man, tempered by the benign, for- 
bearing, mellowing element of time. 

6. It is limited by American and patriotic con- 
siderations. Mr. N. Appleton's letter (March 22, 
1860) to Mr. W. C. Rives, from which we have 
already quoted, demonstrates that there is no an- 
tagonism of interests between the Free States and 
Slave, and that the present conflict is " as unnatu- 
ral as unchristian." He also shows, that, in the an-- 
tagonism of races, there is an impassable gulf: "The 
two races cannot be amalgamated or absorbed. . . . 
Emigration is out of the question, as inadequate, 
if desirable. It is doubtful whether they would be 
better off in the West Indies, under the present 
system of coolies ; or in Canada, where they are not 



24 



wanted, and wlicrc they are miserable. . . . Can 
any man of common sense suppose that such an 
amount of property can be abandoned or anni- 
hilated ? Slavery has died out when slaves have 
ceased to have value, and not before. All attempts 
at the North to affect the state of slavery at the 
South are idle and futile. Doubtless some improve- 
ment may be made in the treatment of slaves ; but 
this had better be left to the parties interested. All 
pressure from without is hateful and unjustifiable." 
Thus are all American interests, not those of a 
class only, whether cotton-planters at the South or 
commercial men at tlie North, jeoparded by dis- 
union. It is limited, too, by patriotic motives. 
The warnings and appeals of the Father of his 
Country refer emphatically to the dangers of sec- 
tional hostility. This was the " serpent " at the foot 
of the " eagle's nest." * While in New York, before 
the battle of Long Island, when alienation threat- 
ened between the troops of New England and Vir- 
ginia, Washington " urges that the Provinces are all 
united to oppose a common enemy, and all distinc- 
tions sunk in the name of American. To make that 
name honorable, and to preserve the liberty of the 
country, ought to be our only emulation ; and he 

* From an apt illustration in Rev. Mr. Alger's late Masonic Address. 



25 



will be the best soldier and the best patriot wlio 
contributes most to this glorious work, whatever his 
station, or from whatever part of the continent he 
may come." * — Irving' s Life of Washington^ vol. ii. 
p. 300. 

7. This moral responsibility, again, is limited by 
Providence ; not, as I understand, by a '' providential 
necessity," as maintained in the " New- York Chris- 
tian Inquirer," f — which theory makes you with 
Providence when you incessantly oppose slavery ; 
but rather by that limited permission — the sounder 
view — which makes you with Providence when 
you are patient with it. Does not this explain the 
resentful tone of the communications the doctrine 
drew forth from the quarter where it applied, not- 
withstanding the calm ability and noble Christian 
friendliness with which it was stated ? ^' I cannot 
but believe," says Rev. Dr. Robbins in a late dis- 
course,J after citing the condition of things at the 
time of the Federal Union, " that Divine Providence 
designed to yoke freedom and slavery together 
for a mutual benefit. . . . Our fathers, when the 
great struggle was over, when the great victory was 



* For illustrations of a like spirit, see Amory's Life of James Sulli- 
van, vol. i. pp. 68-9 and elsewhere. 

t By Kev. Dr. Bellows, Feb. 9, 1861. 

X From the text, " There is a breach in the wall," published in the 
Boston Courier, Jan. 10, 1861. 

3 



26 



achieved, when the providential lioiir h.ad come, felt 
that they must have a union of all the States. 
This duty was plain. . . . Slavery must come into 
the republic, or else no republic could exist, and no 
secure foundation for liberty be laid in this Western 
hemisphere. They felt it to be an element of 
weakness and of division ; . . . but they did the best 
they could do. . . . Slavery existed ; . . . they could 
not prevent it ; they could not abolish it. What, 
then, could they do with it ? Tahe it into the nation. 
... It seems as if Divine Providence intentionally 
committed the treatment and the cure of this most 
baneful social evil, entailed upon the present by the 
ignorance, the cupidity, the barbarism, of the past, — 
that he purposely intrusted the solution of this most 
difficult problem to the youngest, the freest, and the 
most vigorous of the nations, and that for a mutual 
benefit ; that, by the broad contrast, the greatness 
of the wrong of oppression might be made conspi- 
cuous and palpable to mankind ; that the evils of 
bondage might be alleviated while they should en- 
dure ; and, in the end, the institution of slavery 
itself be abolished from the face of the whole earth. 
. . . Such was tlie hope of our fathers ; such has 
been hitherto the fond dream of the Christian pa- 
triot ; such was the work providentially assigned to 
our country. Shall that fair hope be bliglited ? " 



27 



'' I do now believe," ssljs Dr. Fuller, ^' that the 
guardianship of a kind master is at this time a great 
blessing to the African. ^ If emancipation is ever to 
take place, it will be gradually, and under the mild 
but resistless influence of the gospel. Whether 
slavery be an evil or not, we at the Soutli did not 
bring these Africans here : we protested against 
their introduction. The true friend of the African 
is at the South, and thousands of hearts there are 
seeking to know what can be done for this race." 

Providential appointment we accept, rather than 
providential necessity. The latter savors too mucli 
of the Buckle theory, of atlieistic fatalism and hu- 
man impatience, instead of the slow " sufficient unto 
the day " process of the vast Providence whose steps 
are centuries and whose exceptions are ages, vary- 
ing in duration with the occasion, but always marked 
by the most distinguishingly divine of all attributes, 
— the power to bring good out of evil. 

8. This moral responsibility is, finally, limited by 
the paramount duty of pacification. This is always 
the foremost duty of men and States. It is even 
before devotion : " first be reconciled to thy brotlier, 
and then come and offer thy gift " to God. It is the 
first step of wisdom, without which there may be 
some fallibility in every succeeding one. . It is the 
first moral condition ; which being neglected, it can- 



28 



not without presumption be hoped that the works of 
our hands will be prospered, or our reasonable de- 
sires be secured. Reconciliation is the first obliga- 
tion, the first responsibility, of the alienated and 
hostile : it was so in the time of Abraham, is now, 
and ever will be the same. "And Abraham said 
unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, be- 
tween thee and me ; for we be brethren : if thou 
wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; 
or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to 
tlie left" (Gen. xiii. 8). Peace hung upon the offer 
then made and accepted. May it be so now ! 

Some injustice is at the bottom of every quarrel. 
Some sacrifices of feeling all reconciliations require. 
To both parties, of course, cannot equally belong the 
guilt of " the beginning of strife ; " yet, by a like 
readiness to make such sacrifices, both may be equal 
in the atoning merit of closing it. There are times 
and seasons when the work of reconciliation may be 
tlie paramount duty of all. If ever, in human his- 
tory, such a season occurred, it is upon us now. 
Sacrifices of feeling do not necessarily imply conces- 
sion of principle : that may be reserved. Neither 
do they imply the surrender of a right; for the 
exercise of a right may be waived, while the riglit 
itself is maintained. Suppose the principle this, in 
the words of Mr. Gooch, of the Massachusetts House 



29 



of Representatives, Feb. 23,* 1861; viz., "The 
doctrine of the North is, that slavery is a moral and 
political evil, and ought not to be extended into 
the territories of the United States : " may not the 
principle be retained, while the right to apply it 
is suspended ? While writing these words, I find 
in tlie " Boston Evening Transcript " of March 4 
the following confirmatory passage : " Mr. Critten- 
den, changing his programme, has expressed his be- 
lief, that all that was necessary to settle the present 
disturbances was to agree that in the sterile terri- 
tory of New Mexico the state of things should remain 
as it is, and that she should be admitted as a State." 
" This is simply the plan of Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams," adds the editor ; '^ and there can be little 
doubt, that, if the border States want nothing more 
than this, our difficulties can be readily settled. 
The Republicaii can consent to such a compromise, 
without any real concession of principle." f The pa- 
triotic, comprehensive statesmanship of Adams has 
led to the proposal of a similar consistent adjust- 
ment, virtually taking the fuel from the flame. The 
little 'practically at stake (a proper limit of respon- 



* As reported in the Boston Journal of March 4, 1861. 

t The amendment of the Constitution, that has just passed botli 
branches in Congress, must, as a step of justice, greatly tend to har- 
mony. 



30 



sibility, as well as motive for pacification) gave 
Demosthenian force to the voice of Durant, when, in 
view of the slave increase in New Mexico of twelve 
in ten years, he demanded, '^ Will you break down the 
government and deluge the country with blood for 
tliis ? " Our new President was said to have served 
his party enough by having defended tlie riglits of 
tlie West: let us, in the spirit of pacification, accept 
it as so much service of his country. The calm, 
johilosophical judgment of Seward should convince 
us that all other things are subordinate to tlie 
Union. Until we can look forward into the future 
of America from a higlier standpoint, we may learn 
from the prophetic foresight of Curtis to leave some 
territorial legislation to posterity. With regard 
not only to free-soil extension, but much else, we 
may well adopt the following seasonable words : * 
'' When I reflect upon the value of the Union, I 
deem it our duty to submit to something less than 
exact justice, and accept that amount of right 
which for the time we can obtain." Let every Ame- 
rican ear heed patriot Crittenden's appeal. Let us 
preserve the Union, and the Union will preserve 
us. Let a penetration deep as that of Everett warn 
us in season, that, without a return of the fraternal 
spirit that Washington inculcated, even the soil of 

* From a discourse by Rev. Mr. Lovering of Boston. 



31 



Massachusetts might soon be wet with her children's 
blood, shed in civil feud. Or, listening to the pulpit, 
can we believe there is no accountability to God as 
to the question, whether, when violence is in all 
the land, we may do what tends to increase, rather 
than diminish, the excesses in which it is breaking 
out?* 

Let us hope much from the paramount duty of 
pacification. It is very nearly identified with the 
" charity" that exacteth not all " her own." War, 
according to Cousin, consists in the conflict of ideas ; 
rather, we should say, in the temper in which 
opposite ideas are agitated. It depends upon tlie 
manner of their use, whether conflicting opinions 
are to be bent into " pruning-hooks " or pointed into 
" spears." Pacification, that paramount duty, re- 
quires the reversal or discontinuance of all such 
separating and war-breathing phrases as " irrecon- 
cilable feeling " or " irrepressible conflict." Here let 
the States join hand in hand, and let every American 
within their borders pledge to his country that ser- 
vice, and soon we shall see no image of war, but 
revolutionary swords crossed in amity upon the pa- 
triot's wall, or kept as relics in the Capitol, with 
nought upon them but the stain of time, reminding 
us of placid years after defeat of foreign foes ; or, 



* Rev. Dr. Dewey's sermon after the invasion of John Brown. 






being " beaten into ploughshares," foreshowing, 
that, in the earthly futurity, the only hopeful fields 
are those in which the "reapers" are ''the better 
angels," * and tlie harvest " the peaceable fruits of 
rigliteousness." 

* See President Lincoln's Inaugural Address, at the close. 



FINIS. 



GJ^YLORO BROS. 

MAKERS 

SYRACUSE,- N-^' 

p*T. JAN. 2«. '9°« 



! I.t-'f'lif*; 




